Dilbert_X wrote:
uziq wrote:
plenty of other countries in the world have no problem with simply building more homes to accommodate changes in population or demand.
Europeans generally don't want to live in one heaving, sweating mass, they like space and peace and quiet, not everything turned into 100 floor Mega-City high-rises.
Britain did not have the farmland to feed itself in WW2, unlimited growth is not sustainable.
the europeans don't suffer with housing shortages and problems in the same way that anglo countries do. the 'englishman's home is his castle' syndrome afflicts anglo countries most of all.
you get intergenerational renting arrangements in germany with families never owning property but occupying a well-appointment apartment in a tony neighbourhood. no anxiety about home ownership. no mad scramble to get on the housing ladder as if it's the only way to build intergenerational wealth, etc. this idea that the best thing you can do with your money is to pay off a mortgage and hand it on to your children is a very angloid phenomenon, and a middle-class one at that. a narrow strip of the ideological terrain, in other words.
Britain did not have the farmland to feed itself in WW2, unlimited growth is not sustainable.
i suspect this had more to do with autarky and the sudden harrassing of seaborne trade by the germans, not the fact that england was maxing out its malthusian capacity. you love that claptrap. on the contrary, britain embarked on one of the biggest house-building sprees in its history in the immediate wake of ww2. that's rather where this modern myth of home ownership began for the vast majority of the population.
green field sites are more about arts & crafts ruritarianism and quaint national trust conservationism than it is about 'we can't feed ourselves'. the british government have been fucking over farmers in numerous ways in recent years, which leads me to think our food supply isn't near the top of the national crisis list.
Last edited by uziq (2026-06-14 07:35:25)